Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski

Three stays at the Villa Richelieu

Tchaikovsky discovered Clarens in the autumn of 1877, at a moment of personal crisis. He settled at the Villa Richelieu, a lakeside guesthouse, and there finished orchestrating the first act of “Eugene Onegin”.

He came back twice: from late February to mid-April 1878, then from January to mid-February 1879. Each time he had a piano installed in the salon and worked. The third stay was almost entirely devoted to “The Maid of Orleans”.

Spring 1878: the Violin Concerto

The second stay was the most fruitful. Tchaikovsky was joined there by the violinist Iosif Kotek, a former student from his theory classes in Moscow, and by his brother Anatoly.

Kotek’s presence changed everything: the composer, who was not a violinist, suddenly had a performer to test every idea on. He began the Violin Concerto in D major on 17 March 1878. By 11 April the work was fully orchestrated.

Less than a month for a concerto now played the world over, and one first judged unplayable by its intended dedicatee. It was born in Clarens, in a lakeside guesthouse.

What remains in Montreux

The Villa Richelieu has gone, and its site has changed face three times: it became the Hôtel Continental, was demolished, then replaced in 1982 by the Hyatt, today the Royal Plaza, west of the Parc Vernex.

Tchaikovsky shares Clarens with Igor Stravinsky, who would compose “The Rite of Spring” there thirty-five years later: two Russian revolutions in music written in the same village. The Violin Concerto, for its part, carries the mention of its Swiss birth in every biography of the composer.